USPS® Employee Shares the Most Common Postal Abbreviations

My days of studying French are over, but I’ve found new work in translating the wild world of words at the Postal Service® starting with monkey-free swing rooms, buggies without babies and bird-less cages. Sound bizarre? Postal lingo is a creative expression of words and phrases used to get the mail processed and delivered.

To those who have never been exposed to the operations of a Post Office™ or mail processing plant, these terms may sound strange, but read on to learn the lingo from a postal insider.

With the current shortcuts used via the internet and social media, the Postal Service has been shortening terms to acronyms to ease communication and provide consistency in terminology across the organization.

United States Postal Service® (USPS®)

The acronym used for our organization itself, USPS, may not bring instant recognition for what it represents — United States Postal Service®. While some still use the “Post Office Department”, which was the official name until 1971 when it was reorganized, many just refer to the organization as “the Post Office.”

Postmaster General™ (PMG)

The Chief Executive Officer of the Postal Service is the PMG or Postmaster General, an office that dates back to Benjamin Franklin who was the first PMG appointed by the Continental Congress in 1775. The current PMG is Megan Brennan who took office in 2015.